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About
- Daniel Sieradski is a cause media entrepreneur with over a decade's experience in social innovation and cause marketing within the nonprofit sector. He is presently the sole proprietor of The Self Agency, Ltd., a boutique digital agency that specializes in digital strategy, online communications, graphic design, web design and new media production. He is also Director of Jew It Yourself: The Every Day Guide to Do-It-Yourself Jewish Living and a co-organizer of Occupy Judaism.Called "a major figure of the Jewish Internet world and a cultural trailblazer" by the Jewish Daily Forward, Sieradski is the former publisher of the pioneering weblog Jewschool.com and has been a contributor to Jewcy.com and JTA News. He is also a writer, photographer, filmmaker and graphic designer whose work explores themes of post-normative Jewish cultural expression.Sieradski was numbered among the 2010 Forward 50 and the New York Jewish Week's inaugural 36 Under 36, and was the recipient of a Dorot Foundation Fellowship in Israel in 2004.He lives in Brooklyn, NY with his wife Morrisa.
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Info
- SummaryCause media entrepreneur with over a decade's experience in social innovation and cause marketing within the Jewish communal sector.
Director of Jew It Yourself: The Every Day Guide to Do-It-Yourself Jewish Living, Director of Digital Strategy for Repair the World, Digital Strategist for Heeb: The New Jew Review. Former publisher of the pioneering weblog Jewschool.com.
Called "a major figure of the Jewish Internet world and a cultural trailblazer" by the Jewish Daily Forward. Also a photographer and filmmaker whose work explores themes of post-normative Jewish cultural expression.
2010 Forward 50; 2008 New York Jewish Week 36 Under 36; 2010 PresenTense NYC Fellow; 2004 Dorot Foundation Israel Fellow.Specialties: Digital strategy, content strategy and production, web design and development, nonprofit communications, digital photography and filmmaking, event production and promotionExperience- Nov 2011 - PresentSole proprietor / The Self Agency, Ltd.Digital strategy, online communications and campaigns, web design and development, graphic design, and new media production for nonprofits and small businesses.
- Jan 2002 - PresentDirector / Jew It YourselfJew It Yourself develops content and technologies that enhance self-directed Jewish learning and community-building.
- Aug 2009 - Nov 2011Director of Digital Strategy / Repair the WorldRepair the World seeks to make service a defining element of American Jewish life. Responsible for the creation and management of marketing and communications strategy for the Jewish community’s leading volunteerism and service advocacy organization. Designed and developed messaging strategies, digital assets, and print collateral targeting multiple, idiosyncratic constituencies. Designed and developed the Jewish community’s first-ever search engine for Jewish service opportunities. Provide marketing support, technical assistance and digital strategy consulting to 18 grantee-partners, as well as to numerous national and community partners. Developed Repair’s strategy for probono/skilled volunteer engagement and nonprofit volunteer engagement capacity building. Manage a department of three, including a production assistant and two content producers.
- Aug 2007 - Jul 2009Director of Digital Media / Jewish Telegraphic AgencyOversaw redesign and redeployment of website for America's oldest and most preeminent Jewish community news organization. Developed digital content strategy, including launch of online video news division, user generated content tools and social media plan. Drafted 21st century business and technology model for North American Jewish newspapers.
- Aug 2004 - Sept 2007Co-Founder & Director / Corner ProphetsIsraeli-Palestinian hip-hop collective that promotes coexistence and conflict resolution to youth by creating opportunities to find common ground around shared interests in all aspects of hip-hop culture: music, poetry, art, and dance (otherwise known as emceeing, djing, beatboxing, street art, and breakdancing). Produced and promoted widely successful hip-hop showcases, poetry readings, art exhibits, film screenings and even a comedy tour, but didn't make a dent in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. :/
- 2001 - 2007Editor-in-Chief & Founding Publisher / JewschoolAt its peak, Jewschool had 50,000 monthly unique visitors and 80 contributors from 14 countries, including many of the creators of the most innovative new Jewish initiatives of the last decade, including JDub Records, Heeb Magazine and G-dcast. Jewschool has been cited and stolen from by the New York Times and every major Jewish newspaper in the United States and Israel. It has spawned dozens of other blogs, as well as advanced the careers of its bloggers, and has been, without question, one of the most influential Jewish media outlets of the 21st century.
- Jun 2001 - Feb 2004Webmaster / JCC in ManhattanDesigned, developed and maintained website for second largest Jewish community center in New York City. Engineered content management solution now being licensed to community centers around the U.S.
EducationAdditional Information-
Websites:
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Honors:Dorot Fellowship in Israel, 2004 The Jewish Week's 36 Under 36, 2008 The Big Jewcy, 2010 The Forward 50, 2010
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Interests:Jews, Judaism, Israel, social justice, social action, community service, politics, art, music, social media, technology
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Tweets
- Bklyn DA reveals new details on nearly 100 Orthodox sex abuse cases http://t.co/lV9FtR9O – but talking about it online is the real problem
- From Circumcision To Molestation, How the Ultra-Orthodox Place Children at Risk http://t.co/0hJTyqpX
- @shaifranklin this is the outgrowth of several years of failed efforts to silence critical frum bloggers http://t.co/SxxrgPWR
- @shaifranklin matis. salomon has publicly condemned bloggers for outing haredi sex offenders & called blogs "a plague" & "insidious poison"
- @YeahThatsKosher which just so happen to block frum blogs that criticize the haredi establishment
- Stunned that not a single news source has written that the anti-Internet rally is about silencing criticism of rabbinic sex abuse cover ups
- I'm at Stella's Diner (Syracuse, NY) w/ 3 others http://t.co/3N726cva
- I just unlocked the "Greasy Spoon" badge on @foursquare for checking in at diners! Bring on the burgers! http://t.co/T8g9Q9RW
- Flipped on the radio and the author of The Talmud and the Internet is talking about extremism & today's anti-Internet asifa
- enforcing laws the state refuses to enforce & saving the planet in the process is not terrorism #freepaulwatson http://t.co/jALorhRQ
- Why the rich aren't actually job creators and how that false notion is ruining our economy http://t.co/7dMauQrE
- @ylove "a black jew, like that's new" –mf doom #teamunoriginal
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Posts
- The Commentary Conspiracy
My comments to Commentary on Omri Ceren’s latest idiocy:
LOL. Who thought Commentary would one day be hawking conspiracy theories about the machinations of Jewish liberals?! You forgot to included a picture of George Soros pulling puppet strings with your post!
Just for your information: I resigned from Jewschool in 2007 when I went to work at JTA News as part of a noncompete agreement and have had no relationship to the site in the successive five years. Also, Occupy Judaism has never worked with J Street in any capacity and the letter, to my understanding, originated with Mark Green and Elliot Spitzer, not J Street. Furthermore, I did not take the Occupy Judaism site down – I was experiencing an issue with my DNS server which I was unaware of until I saw Omri’s tweets accusing me of colluding with J Street to hide said letter.
That said, your so-called “extensively documented antisemitism” is also largely a crock. I lived in a sukkah in Zuccotti Park for a week and the only people who had anything nasty to say to me about being Jewish were right-wing Jews like you. When I have encountered anti-Jewish bigotry from individual occupiers (as you would anywhere, being that 15% of Americans hold antisemitic beliefs), the movement has responded to the best of its ability in opposition to such bigotry, and satisfactorily so.
As such, I find that the frequency with which you have lied about me and OWS in the past six months beyond staggering. You’ve fabricated much of what you have printed and never bothered once to pick up a phone and verify any of your claims, nor have you done any firsthand reporting on the subject. Indeed, even Ira Stoll has testified that the reality of OWS and Occupy Judaism does not match your version of things. And yet, you persist.
Well guess what friends, I hope you have your tinfoil hats on! Because here’s the big conspiracy for you: I am a technology consultant for your online ad sales rep. Indeed, I helped setup your ad server. And while I have never received a dime of George Soros’ money (which I would unashamedly welcome), I have taken yours! Thus by Omri’s reasoning of guilt by association, that makes Occupy Judaism’s purported efforts to cover up antisemitism at Occupy Wall Street a secret plot by no less than Commentary Magazine itself!
Is it merely an attempt to generate page views by concocting a foil for Commentary’s diatribists? Is it part of a highly sophisticated effort to tar liberal Jews as being in bed with antisemites and Israel-haters in order to disenfranchise them from the Jewish community? Or is Occupy Judaism truly a nefarious ploy by neoconservative Zionist agents to infiltrate Occupy Wall Street and destroy it from within?
Only time will tell!
- Upcoming Talks on Occupy Judaism
I have a variety of public speaking engagements re: Occupy Judaism upcoming in the next couple of months. Here’s the info. Possibly more to come.
- My last word on Israel/Palestine at OWS
A lot of hay has been made of, well, me, over the last week due to my inquiry into the origins of the OWS Freedom Waves tweet and its subsequent deletion by the OWS media team.
I would first like to reiterate that I did not request the tweet’s deletion. As Will from the OWS PR working group told Mondoweiss, “The tweet was erased because there was discussion about how it was not appropriate to address this issue on these large public social media accounts until we had agreement from the group on our exact stance on these kinds of international conflicts.”
I was not a part of that discussion, as I am not a member of the media working group.
I would also like to say that it was not my intent nor desire to see the tweet deleted, nor to hurt Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims or anyone else who feel kinship with this movement and who felt betrayed by the tweet’s deletion.
Nonetheless, it has been written repeatedly that the tweet was deleted at my “urging,” which could not be further from the truth. It is, however, true that I have at times been frustrated with the actions of some Palestinian solidarity activists at Occupy Wall Street.
So, let’s just recap, shall we?
Michael Letwin of Labor for Palestine tried to get the head of a major labor union thrown off the OWS labor working group because he is a Zionist, calling him a defender of apartheid (despite the fact that he is a vocal opponent of the Israeli occupation). Likewise, Andy Pollack of al-Awda threw a fit in public and on various OWS listservs after a speaker from the Israeli tent protests spoke, threatening to take his ball and go home if “Zionist racists” were allowed to be a part of the movement.
In other words, some Palestinian solidarity activists have actively tried to exclude Zionists from participating in OWS and to make anti-Zionism a litmus test for joining the movement.
Existence is Resistance, a Palestinian solidarity group, held a “Kuffeya Day” event at OWS — which is three blocks from the World Trade Center — calling for clemency for convicted armed militants (ie., “terrorists”) that they advertised using the image of the infamous airplane hijacker Leila Khaled.
In other words, some Palestinian solidarity activist held an event that could have had severe negative impacts on OWS’s public image by associating the movement with support for terrorism.
Finally, a Palestinian solidarity activist on the media working group put out a statement over Twitter of solidarity with Gaza Freedom Waves without authorization from the General Assembly or the media working group.
In other words, some Palestinian solidarity activists are making statements on behalf of the movement without authorization or ratification from the General Assembly.
All I wanted, in inquiring about the tweet, was to know whether the GA had taken a position on the issue, because I had not been present at that evening’s assembly. After spending two weeks aggressively fighting off charges in the press that OWS was a bastion of antisemitism, and working around the clock to address and successfully defeat those claims, I was concerned that I would then have to spend the next two weeks doing the same with the charge that OWS is anti-Israel. It’s not that I personally oppose Freedom Waves — I generally support most nonviolent efforts to resist the occupation. It’s that I am concerned about the movement’s ability to attract more moderate supporters who may not share that view.
Because I dared take issue with the above actions, fearing that they could have negative consequences for the viability of the movement as whole, I have been accused of being a racist who is against Palestinian rights, who is trying to delete Palestinians from history and who wishes to exclude their voices from the protest.
Never mind talking about why any of the above actions by Palestinian solidarity activists are problematic or unfair to the OWS community. Never mind that I have repeatedly taken my lumps standing up in defense of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation over the last decade. As far as Ali Abunimah and Richard Silverstein are now concerned: Dan Sieradski doesn’t think Israel is obligated to commit demographic suicide by reabsorbing Palestinian refugees and is therefore an interminable racist and a fake progressive.
Or maybe — just maybe — some Palestinian solidarity activists behave inappropriately and then others go ballistic when anyone dares take issue with their behavior, using the specter of racism to silence any criticism of their actions.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
I haven’t sought the exclusion of Palestinians nor Palestinian solidarity activists from the movement. Quite the contrary. I made two suggestions: Choose Palestinian solidarity actions which will not serve the propaganda aims of the movement’s opponents. And get buy-in from the community on the ground before you take action that could be interpreted as being done in the movement’s name.
Clearly, I am a big old Abe Foxman using the bludgeon of censorship to silence legitimate resistance to the Israeli occupation. And clearly, this has everything to do with my position on Palestinian refugees.
Or maybe — just maybe — some people are behaving in genuinely problematic ways and I’m allowed to and need to speak up about it if we’re going to build a movement that is inclusive and welcoming of everyone.
Obviously, I’m a racist.
I was interviewed by Mondoweiss about the tweet announcing solidarity with Freedom Waves, the latest attempt by Palestinian solidarity activists to break the Gaza blockade, that was posted and then subsequently deleted from the @OccupyWallSt Twitter account.
- Zionism: Where I'm holding
Excerpts of a blog post I wrote a number of years ago are presently being circulated by Jewish conservatives in an effort to discredit me and the work I’ve done with Occupy Judaism and more broadly in the Jewish community. Unfortunately, the decontextualized text presents me as a shrill religious anti-Zionist. As such, I have penned the following response, which provides an explanation for the post and an update on my personal relationship to Zionism.
On any given day of the week, I vacillate between between a variety of positions on Israel and Zionism. I often say that I am a religious anti-Zionist, an ideological post-Zionist, a pragmatic progressive Zionist, and (mostly kidding) a Kahanist under fire.
To be clear: I believe in the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in their ancestral homeland. I believe the Jewish people have an immutable connection to the land of Israel. And I oppose boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel that are not specifically targeted at institutions directly profiting from the occupation.
On the particular day when I wrote that post, five years ago, I was living in Jerusalem as an Orthodox yeshiva student. I spent a fair deal of time learning with haredi family members who were religiously anti-Zionist. I had just endured the second Lebanon War, and during that time, watched Israeli society completely lose its mind and any semblance of tolerance or decency towards not only anyone Arab in ethnic origin, but also those who identified Arabs as human beings created in the image of God and worthy of human and civil rights.
In response to what was an obvious collapse of morality and Jewish values happening around us, my other friends and I organized a benefit concert for Israeli and Lebanese war victims with the express intent of promoting the Torah values that you should not take pleasure in the downfall of your enemy and that you should regard all life as a manifestation of the Divine.
As a consequence of this, I was threatened physically, receiving death threats by email and telephone. An article was written in the Jerusalem Post alleging that I was an abettor of terrorism. A group of right-wing Jewish bloggers attacked me as a self-hating Jew and an enemy of the Jewish people. People quite literally spit in my face on the streets of Jerusalem.
And in a moment of emotional distress, I wrote a very unfortunately worded blog post lashing out at what I saw as the utter destruction and desecration of Jewish values in the name of national and ethnic supremacism.
Many of the sentiments in the original post I still stand by today (unfortunately, you cannot see the excerpted text in context because the original post is no longer online). But were I asked to sign my name to those words today — were I asked even a week after I had written them — I would not.
Rather I would say, I believe strongly in the need for a Jewish state and Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel, but I do not — by any stretch of the imagination — support the policies of the government of Israel and I actively oppose the occupation of the Palestinian territories.
Ultimately, I believe that if we compromise and sacrifice our Jewish values in the name of military supremacy or mere physical survival then there is little purpose in having a Jewish state because the shared values that are the basis for our collective identity — and thus which justify our right to self-determination — will have been negated.
My distress and desperation at seeing the inability of Israel to progress beyond its status quo often leads me to question the sustainability of the Zionist project. But I will never negate the right of our people to express their self-determination through statehood, even while disenchanted with the form that statehood takes.
In other words: I am a reluctant Zionist, a critical Zionist, some days a borderline anti-Zionist, but a Zionist nonetheless — much to the chagrin of both the anti-Zionist Left and the Zionist ultra-Right.
I take that to mean that I’m doing something right.
- When bigots cry "Anti-Zionism isn't antisemitism"
A note to those preaching antisemitism while calling themselves anti-Zionists:
Anti-Zionism is rejecting the idea of Jewish nationalism and statehood as a resolution to the problem of Jewish persecution. It is not speculating conspiracy theories about Jewish control of the banks, the government or the world.
If you say, “I oppose the existence of the state of Israel because it does not resolve the problem of Jewish persecution,” or “I am against the occupation of Palestine and believe Israel is a colonialist endeavor of Western powers to wield influence over the Middle East,” or “Zionism in its implementation is racist in effect and Israel/Palestine should be one state for two peoples,” that is anti-Zionism. Most Jews will differ with you, but so long as your anti-statism is not limited in its application to the Jewish state alone, it is in no way antisemitic.
On the other hand, if you say, “Zionist Jews run the banks,” or “The Rothschilds control the world’s wealth,” or “the Zionists have occupied our government,” or “Jews created and run the Federal reserve,” or “Jews control the media,” that is classical antisemitism of the Nazi and Tsarist variety, plain and simple. You cannot just call it anti-Zionism and escape being labeled what you are: An antisemite.
By falsely claiming your bigotry to be merely “anti-Zionism,” you not only distort the meaning of anti-Zionism, but you harm the credibility of any movement with which you associate your conspiratorial and ignorant beliefs.
Do us all a favor and keep that hateful shit away from OWS, the Palestinian solidarity movement and everywhere else people are fighting against oppression and for social and economic justice. It isn’t welcome and until you see the error of your ways, neither are you.
Photo of the first Shabbat potluck at Occupy Wall StreetWant to Occupy Shabbat in your community? Here’s how to get started!
- Help #OWS survive the winter
Occupy Wall Street needs your help to survive through the cold weather. If you’re in the area, please bring these items by the Comfort area. If you’re not and would still like to help, you can ship items to:
Occupy Wall Street
118A Fulton St. Box 205
New York, NY 10038Occupy Wall Street Winter needs
- insulated gloves, wool hats, scarves
- long underwear / smart wool thermal socks
- hand warmers, foot warmers
- waterproof boots in all sizes
- disposable shoe covers
- winter coats
- hot beverages
- thermal heaters
- all weather sub-thermal sleeping bags
- tarps
- insulating tents; foam padding for inside of tents
- wooden pallets to get tents off the ground
- cots to get people off the ground
- emergency blankets
- dry socks, gloves and hats
- Payless gift certificates for shoes
- towels
- plastic bins
- post tents
- Lies, damned lies & antisemitism at Occupy Wall Street
The conservative media, now relying on the new anti-Occupy Wall Street smear campaign created by William Kristol’s Emergency Committee for Israel, keeps pointing to this bigoted asshole with his “Zionists control Wall St.” sign as evidence that OWS is a purely antisemitic movement.
Yet they’re conveniently editing out the people standing around him at all times with signs saying he’s an asshole and unrepresentative of OWS. People have been trying to chase him from the park since day one, but the NYPD says that if the protesters have a right to freedom of assembly, so does he. As such, they are protecting him and, as one cop told me yesterday, “his constitutional right to be here.”
They also keep pointing to the video of Danny Cline, a performance artist and seemingly troubled individual, yelling at an Orthodox Jew to go back to Israel. Abhorrent as his words and deeds may have been, Cline, who was raised in a Jewish home, says he loves Jewish people and was just messing with the guy.
OWS’ detractors also keep pointing to Adbusters’ history of anti-Zionist and antisemitic writing (for which I myself canceled my friend-of-the-foundation subscription) as evidence that the organizers of OWS are themselves antisemitic. The problem here is that Adbusters isn’t actually involved in OWS in any meaningful capacity beyond having promoted it. As Mother Jones reports:
The group often credited with sparking Occupy Wall Street is Adbusters, the Canadian anti-capitalist magazine that, in July, issued a call to flood lower Manhattan with 90,000 protesters. “Are you ready for a Tahrir moment?” the magazine asked. But that’s not how Occupy Wall Street sprang to life. Without that worldly group that met at 16 Beaver and later created the New York City General Assembly, there might not have been an Occupy Wall Street as we know it today.
In every instance, the evidence of antisemitism used to malign the OWS protesters is shoddy at best.
The fact is that antisemitism is real and something we should genuinely be concerned with, particularly during a time of economic outrage, as the current uprising shares many contours with movements of the past that have vilified Jewish people for their role in finance.
However, when we lie and overstate the presence of antisemitism — when we malign hundreds and thousands of people for the presence of one or two assholes among them and cast the charge of antisemitism about so nonchalantly — we dilute the meaning and efficacy of the term, undermining our ability to effectively combat and prevent the proliferation of actual antisemitism.
Antisemitism should be actively challenged and opposed wherever it rears its ugly head. But we should never tolerate the cynical employment and abuse of the term to support a narrow political agenda.
Update: The Anti-Defamation League has issued a statement calling on Occupy Wall Street to be vigilant against antisemitism while noting, “We believe that these expressions are not representative of the larger views of the OWS movement” and “There is no evidence that these anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are representative of the larger movement or that they are gaining traction with other participants.”
Protesters at Occupy Seattle lock arms to defend a sukkah from destruction by the Seattle Police.This weekend, police in NYC and Seattle forced Jewish protesters to take down temporary shelters used to celebrate the holiday of Sukkot – the Feast of Tabernacles – an annual week-long harvest festival, which also commemorates the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt.
Van Jones, seen here with me and my colleague Charles, popped by Occupy Yom Kippur to express his gratitude for our efforts and to wish us all a meaningful fast and a beautiful holiday. An unexpected and welcome surprise!
Stay up-to-date about radical Jewish happenings at occupations in your local community. Follow @occupyjudaism or like us on Facebook.
- Antisemitism at Occupy Wall Street: Image vs. Reality
Last week two assholes were caught on video at Occupy Wall Street saying profoundly awful, stupid things about Jews, one of whom was consistently heckled and challenged by those around him.
On Friday night, around one thousand — not two, one thousand — Jews assembled for Yom Kippur services in the very same place to express solidarity with the demonstrators’ shared ideal of repairing the world.
Which do you think the media is giving more attention to and is using to describe the character of the Wall Street demonstrations?
I’ll give you a hint: It’s not the perfectly normal people having what many called the most meaningful Jewish experience of their lives — one which has inspired thousands around the country and around the world.
You see: If you tell that story, then the 99% might win. And you know we can’t have that.
After all, look at these vicious antisemites!
Stay up-to-date about radical Jewish happenings at occupations in your local community. Follow @occupyjudaism or like us on Facebook.
- Kol Nidre Minyan at #OccupyWallStreet
“Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement, seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.”
—Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
This Friday night begins Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. On this day, Jews around the world refrain from all physical pleasures (eating, bathing and screwing, to name a few), and devote themselves to prayer and supplication, begging the Lord forgiveness of their sins so that they may be written into the Book of Life.
But is fasting and beating our chests really the best we can do to redeem ourselves?
As lower Manhattan erupts with thousands of protesters taking a stand against economic injustice, the words of the prophet Isaiah resonate more truthfully and appropriately than ever:
Is such the fast that I have chosen? the day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the LORD? Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the fetters of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him, and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh? Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thy healing shall spring forth speedily; and thy righteousness shall go before thee, the glory of the LORD shall be thy rearward.
Thus rather than spending the holiday safe and warm in our cozy synagogues thinking abstractly about human suffering, perhaps we should truly afflict ourselves and undertake the fast of Isaiah, by joining the demonstrators in Zuccotti Park, and holding our Yom Kippur services there amongst the oppressed, hungry, poor and naked.
Not to be cliché, but as Rabbi Hillel the Elder said, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when?”
Join us for Kol Nidrei at Occupy Wall StreetFriday night, Oct 7 @7PM
By the red cube in front of Brown Brothers Harriman
140 Broadway at Liberty Plaza
Directly across from Zuccotti Park
Look for signsPlease read the following notes in full so that you can have the most enjoyable and meaningful experience possible.
TIME AND LOCATION
The service will begin at 7PM sharp.
It will be held directly across from Zuccotti Park in the plaza in front of Brown Brothers Harriman at 140 Broadway in Manhattan, near the red cube. We will have signs posted and you can ask someone at an information table where the Yom Kippur service is being held.
ABOUT THE SERVICEIt will be a traditional egalitarian service: Hebrew language with some English readings and a gender neutral space.
Our wonderful volunteer leaders are Avi Fox Rosen (Storahtelling), Sarah Wolf (JTS), and Getzel Davis (Hebrew College), who are being assisted in preparations by Yosef Goldman (JTS) and Rabbi Ezra Weinberg (RRC). Affiliation is for identification purposes only.
PRAYERBOOKSIf possible, please bring your own Yom Kippur machzor. If you do not have a machzor, we will have ~100, graciously loaned to us by The Rabbinical Assembly for Conservative Judaism. If you prefer, you can download and print this PDF version to bring with you: http://is.gd/AM22Xa. There is also a supplement we request that you print out and bring with you: http://is.gd/idv5aY.
SOUND, PHOTOGRAPHY & LIGHTINGThere will be no musical instruments or amplification. The lack of amplification may make it difficult for the hard of hearing. We will do our best to accommodate.
We also request that you please refrain from taking video or photographs, as more observant participants may feel uncomfortable. If you are being photographed, please do not engage in an altercation with the photographer. Turn away or wave your hand “no” to communicate your desire to not be photographed.
We cannot, as of yet, guarantee a well-lit space. If you are comfortable using electricity on yom tov, we recommend bringing a small flashlight or headlamp to read with.
SEATINGSeating will not be provided. Feel free to bring your own portable chairs or to sit on the ground.
A WORD OF CAUTIONPlease also be advised that as the occupation is both a decentralized action and an act of civil disobedience, there may be disruptions and/or the possibility of police interference. Though it is highly unlikely, participants nonetheless risk the possibility of arrest. Please be prepared for that possibility. The National Lawyers Guild and ACLU have legal observers on-site who can provide legal aid in the event of a police confrontation. Regardless, we request that you be respectful towards the police at all times.
KAPPAROTIf you are interested, come early and bring money for kapparot to donate as tzedakah to the Occupy Wall Street movement. We will do the kapparot ritual at 6PM.
SEUDAH MAFSEKETNo suedah mafseket (pre-fast meal) is officially planned, but feel free to coordinate with others in the comments on the Facebook event page.
SATURDAY SERVICESNo Saturday services are planned. If you will be in the area of Lower Manhattan, you are welcome to attend services at Battery Park Synagogue or Chabad of Wall Street. Otherwise, CBST has welcomed all participants to join them for services at the Javits Convention Center. There are also free services with Ohel Ayalah throughout the city.
G’mar chatimah tova!This event has been endorsed by Jews for Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ) and the Shalom Center.
Put your hand on your heart and ask yourself internally what kind of world do I want to live in? And listen. Now ask yourself, How can I make that happen? How can I make that happen from a place of love, compassion, joy and equanimity. Simple anger can only perpetuate what is already out there. It was created by greed and fear. We have to go beyond that and come from a place of compassion. Centered equanimity and creativity. Once again ask yourself, How can I be the change that I want to see in the world?
Deepak Chopra, addressing the Occupy Wall Street General Assembly 10/3/11- Radio #OccupyWallStreet: A potential end-run around sound permits
If you haven’t been down to Zuccotti Park, rather than rehashing it myself, I recommend reading Richard Kim’s love letter in The Nation to the human microphone – the means of sound amplification currently employed by the unpermitted occupiers of Wall Street.
The need for human amplification became apparent early on with the protests as the NYPD started seizing megaphone wielding demonstrators off the street, as depicted in this widely circulated video:
While the human microphone has its merits and is remarkable for many positive reasons (as Jeff Sharlet tweeted, for example: “Interesting thing about human mike @ #occupywallstreet is that u repeat things you may not agree with. Which can change thinking.”), the truth is, it’s fairly impractical and at times simply infuriating to listen to – at least from my perspective – as it breaks up the natural flow of speech, and thus the natural process of listening.
Pondering this conundrum, it occurred to me that there is, perhaps, a way around the sound permit issue that would allow everyone to hear a speaker clearly without the need for unpermitted amplification equipment, or for the big game of telephone.
In an interview with The Forward newspaper the other day, my friend Ronen – who helped to organize this summer’s economic protests in Israel – asked “Why not buy a few hundred megaphones and dare them to arrest everyone?” It’s a clever thought, though megaphones could be prohibitively expensive, and if the Brooklyn Bridge arrests are any indication, the cops are not afraid to lock up several hundred people at once.
But what if you told everyone to bring a Walkman? Or a battery-powered AM/FM radio they could listen to quietly? The Coby CX73 retails at just $4.
Low-power radio broadcasting equipment is relatively inexpensive and readily available. Truth be told, you could even hack an iTrip and extend its broadcast range upwards of 100 feet. Under the FCC’s Part 15 regulations, an individual can operate a radio station without a license so long as they do not interfere with licensed operators’ broadcasts and their broadcast range is limited to ~200 feet. Setting up a local radio station in Zuccotti Park is thus both affordable and legal.
Luckily, according to John Anderson of DIYMedia.net, the folks at Global Revolution (who are also responsible for the Occupy Wall Street Livestream) already thought of that and setup a microradio station at 107.1FM that is currently broadcasting within the park! But is anyone listening? And is there a concurrent Internet audio stream?
What if that station were to broadcast speakers during the General Assembly, the People’s Soapbox and other speaking events? And what if, instead of handing them a microphone, enabling the police to easily identify and target the source of the broadcast by tracing back the microphone cable, the station operator setup a Skype dial-in number that would rebroadcast over the airwaves? A speaker would simply need to pick up their phone, dial a number, and instantly be speaking directly into the Walkmen, boomboxes, and smartphone radio streaming apps of their fellow demonstrators.
As long as your radio isn’t blaring and “disturbing the peace,” the police would have absolutely no recourse and no justification to arrest anyone. They can’t arrest one person for talking on their cellphone and hundreds, if not thousands of others, for listening to their headphones.
It may be the simplest way of evading the need for a permit and pissing off neighborhood residents, and would allow for the General Assembly and other speaking events to carry far into the night.
- Shabbat Solidarity Potluck Dinner at #OccupyWallStreet
FRIDAY, SEPT. 30, 8PM | ZUCCOTTI PARK, NYC (Meet at steps on Broadway side)
Shabbat is a rejection of commerce, capitalism & exploitation: A day free from work, from business transactions, from handling money. As the Old Testament says, “And you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt. Therefore the Eternal your God commanded to keep the Sabbath day.” Whether or not one is religious, this statement reverberates with profound meaning for those who recognize the need for working class people to have a reprieve from their labors – but more so, from their exploitation at the hands of others.
As an expression of solidarity with those protesting on Wall Street against the excesses and corruption of the financial elite and against the slavery the upper classes have foisted upon working and unemployed people alike, members of the Jewish community are banding together to hold a Shabbat potluck dinner at Zuccotti Park this Friday night.
Everyone is welcome. You don’t have to be Jewish to participate. But please try to keep the food vegetarian or kosher-by-ingredient (no pork, shellfish or milk & meat together). Please let us know what you’re planning to bring by Thursday night.
- Direct Action Theory & Practice for #OccupyWallStreet
While dropping in on the #OccupyWallStreet protests a couple of times in the last week, it became clear to me that this movement could benefit strongly from a greater awareness of direct action in theory and practice. What follows is a short collection of texts that will give the reader a thorough grounding in the use of direct action as a means for affecting radical social transformation. This is merely what I could remember off the top of my head. I will add more as more titles occur to me.
Theory
- From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation – The manual employed by the Tahrir Square protest organizers in toppling the Mubarak regime
- Direct Action: An Ethnography – A complete study of the history of direct action
- Anarchy Alive: Anti-Authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory – A study of contemporary anarchist organizing theory
- Anarchist Direct Actions: A Challenge for Law Enforcement – A look at how the police understand direct action
- The Advent of Netwar – A Rand Corporation (military contractor) handbook on the tactics of decentralized activist networks
- Anarchy in the Age of Dinosaurs – A treatise on horizontal, decentralized, affinity structures as an alternative to mass movement mobilizations
Practice
- Act Up Civil Disobedience Training – A guide to direct action from the notorious AIDS awareness org
- Ruckus Society Action Planning Manual –ָ A primer from the Ruckus Society in planning direct actions
- Recipes for Disaster: An Anarchist Cookbook – A handbook for direct action and DIY living from Crimethinc
- Bodyhammer: Tactics & Self-Defense for the Modern Protester – A guide to the creation of shields, body armor and other apparatus for defending protesters from police violence
- Locking Down With Lock Boxes – Instructions for creating lock boxes excerpted from “Recipes for Disaster”
- Creative Direct Action Visuals – A guide to creating posters, puppets, t-shirts and other communications assets
- When We Wake Up
Here’s the Alan Watts snippet I read last night at Jay Michaelson and Paul Dakin’s sheva brochas:
The world is like a game of hide-and-seek, because it’s always fun to find new ways of hiding, and to seek for someone who doesn’t always hide in the same place.” God likes to play hide-and-seek, but because there is nothing outside God, he has no one but himself to play with. But he gets over this difficulty by pretending that he is not himself. This is his way of hiding from himself. He pretends that he is you and I and all the people in the world, all the animals, all the plants, all the rocks, and all the stars. In this way he has strange and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening. But these are just like bad dreams, for when he wakes up they will disappear.
Now when God plays hide and pretends that he is you and I, he does it so well that it takes him a long time to remember where and how he hid himself. But that’s the whole fun of it—just what he wanted to do. He doesn’t want to find himself too quickly, for that would spoil the game. That is why it is so difficult for you and me to find out that we are God in disguise, pretending not to be himself. But when the game has gone on long enough, all of us will wake up, stop pretending, and remember that we are all one single Self—the God who is all that there is and who lives for ever and ever.
Here’s the original source.
- Gowanus Superfund site residents stay put despite evacuation order
Brooklyn residents alongside the Gowanus Canal were staying put this Saturday despite an evacuation order from the City of New York. The Gowanus Canal is a federally registered Superfund cleanup site, considered lethally toxic to humans.
As New York Magazine reported earlier today:
When Hurricane Irene hits the New York area on Sunday, the neighborhoods surrounding the Gowanus Canal are in for a literal shitstorm — and that may be the least of their problems.
The latest projections anticipate a storm surge of 7 to 15 feet in New York Harbor on Sunday. A dome of water would travel from Upper New York Bay, through Gowanus Harbor, and into the 1.5 mile-long Gowanus Canal near Smith and 9th St. Once in the canal, it could stir up a heady mix of pollutants — essentially oil, heavy metals, and human excrement — and distribute it throughout the slowly gentrifying area that sits among some of Brownstone Brooklyn’s priciest neighborhoods.
At this time no precautions seem to have been taken to ensure the safety of local residents.
This afternoon I posted a photoset showing the Union Street Bridge was still open to traffic, that minimal preparations had been made against flooding, and that residents weren’t going anywhere. In particular, I expressed concerned for the residents of the Gowanus Houses – a NYCHA housing project one block west of the canal – who were not evacuated.
Though Mayor Mike Bloomberg explained in a press conference this afternoon that the city would be shutting off power and water to NYCHA properties in Zone A, and providing bus service to residents to help them relocate to shelters, no such buses were seen and residents seemed unaware as to any evacuation order or that their electricity and water was to be shut off.
At my Twitter behest, the NY Times’s Michael Barbaro kindly asked Bloomberg about Gowanus in what became the last question of this evening’s mayoral press conference. Bloomberg wasn’t sure whether Gowanus was under evacuation order but said it was “hard to believe” and “unfair” to say that no one told residents of effected areas to evacuate.
By email NYC Councilmember Steve Levin, in whose district the Gowanus Canal resides, said, “Although they are on the border of the zones, the Gowanus Houses are in Zone B and were not under the mandatory evacuation order.”
The Gowanus Houses are nevertheless directly across the street from Zone A, and again, only one block west of the canal.
Far left, the Gowanus Houses. Far right, at end of street, the Gowanus Canal. Picture via Google Street View.
“My office has been in contact with residents there and have impressed upon them that they should take all precautions necessary,” Levin said.
Levin’s remarks don’t account for the lack of a police presence in the area, alerting and assisting Zone A residents to evacuate, as was seen in more well-to-do areas, such as Battery Park City. There police used bullhorns to warn residents to leave and had MTA buses available to aid in evacuation.
With the known presence of toxic waste in the water, Gowanus’ neglect is all the more troubling. One resident, squarely within Zone A, told me he “hadn’t heard a thing” about evacuation. “I’ve lived here since 1938,” he said, the year the New England hurricane caused New York’s last great flood. “I’ve seen it all. I’m not going anywhere.”
“My biggest concern with this storm is that we’ll have flooding problems around the Gowanus Canal and Newtown Creek — also a Superfund site,” said Levin. “I have reached out to DEP, OEM and the Mayor’s Office to express my concerns about flooding around both Superfund sites.”
We’ll find out tomorrow if the city’s taking those concerns seriously.
- Help identify Rae Abileah's attackers
By now you’re likely to have heard the tale of JVP/Code Pink activist Rae Abileah’s alleged assault following her disruption of Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress.
I’m in the midst of writing a piece on the subject, but in order to do so, I first need your help to identify the Jewish communal leaders whom ripped from her hands the banner she held, and whom she claims strangled and beat her.
Who are these two men with the blue ties on the far left of these photographs?
And who is the blonde woman here who appears to be pushing Ms. Abileah into Ralph Reed possibly?
And who is the man in the black suit here with his arm up? I spy Malcolm Hoenline, Abe Foxman, maybe Alan Solow and Shmuley Boteach, who blogged about the incident.
If you can identify any of these individuals, please email me at ds at danielsieradski dot com.
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New Orleans 3/12
